Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
arstechnica.co.uk
Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
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Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#2The Court of Justice of the EU has some of the most competent IT lawyers of the world. I am sure they already compiled a memo about the definition of "hyperlink". I'd love to see it.
What constitutes an hyperlink?
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#3> Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used.
A hyperlink is just an address of some kind that client software interprets in a certain way allowing users to easily send network packets to it. Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by whoever controls the address, and outside the control of the publisher of the hyperlink.
So if one published, say, a phone book, with all of the addresses and phone numbers of consenting residents in a city, when a reader dials one of those numbers, or sends a letter to one of those addresses, it's entirely possible that a reply could come back containing copyrighted material. Should the publisher be required to check every address and phone number for such copyright-violating replies before publishing the phone book?
The response that the controller of an address sends (if any) to requests sent to it may change from request to request, for any reason at all. Would it be illegal to publish a hyperlink to an HTTP URL that has a 50% probability of responding with copyrighted material? 10% probability? 1%?
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#4What do search engines like Google think of this proposal, e.g. would web search be less useful because of lost PageRank signals, or would web search be more in demand because there would be no other way to find web pages? For that matter, how would search engines discover new web pages if people are reluctant to link to new pages?
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#5No one can be dumb enough to destroy the very basis of the entire web. Perhaps it will just be annoying like clicking on a link requires an alert telling the user that the destination may not be acceptable, like the cookie alert but more intrusive. I wonder how this applies to JSON or XML links?
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#6No one can be dumb enough to destroy the very basis of the entire web. Perhaps it will just be annoying like clicking on a link requires an alert telling the user that the destination may not be acceptable, like the cookie alert but more intrusive. I wonder how this applies to JSON or XML links?
What about if I send a link via some sort of messaging app possibly to a friend in another country? (the Dutch/Australian issue mentioned)
That can be a standalone application and not a web page, so the initial assumption of "every hyperlink in a Web page" fails.
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#7> Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used. A hyperlink is just an address of some kind that client software interprets in a certain way allowing users to easily send network packets to it. Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by…
For a different spin on that example, say you sold a directory of crack dealer's phone-numbers called 1800-dragon-chasers. It seems clear its aiding in a criminal enterprise and not a totally innocent knowledge product. I wonder if you could be charged for that.
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#8> Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used. A hyperlink is just an address of some kind that client software interprets in a certain way allowing users to easily send network packets to it. Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by…
For a different spin on that example, say you sold a directory of crack dealer's phone-numbers called 1800-dragon-chasers. It seems clear its aiding in a criminal enterprise and not a totally innocent knowledge product. I wonder if you could be charged for that.
It seems clear its aiding in a criminal enterprise and not a totally innocent knowledge product.
What if I'm selling it to the police or to NGOs looking to help drug addicts?
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#9What do search engines like Google think of this proposal, e.g. would web search be less useful because of lost PageRank signals, or would web search be more in demand because there would be no other way to find web pages? For that matter, how would search engines discover new web pages if people are reluctant to link to new pages?
Search engines must provide links themselves.
Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks
#10No one can be dumb enough to destroy the very basis of the entire web. Perhaps it will just be annoying like clicking on a link requires an alert telling the user that the destination may not be acceptable, like the cookie alert but more intrusive. I wonder how this applies to JSON or XML links?
Who wins if the web loses? Instead of discovery via hyperlinks, publishers could be forced to distribute via Facebook Instant Articles or Apple News, which would perform copyright clearance services. TPP/TTIP bring new penalties and many changes related to copyright, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/how-tpp-will-affect-yo...